Hydrogenaudio Forums > Different Cover Art formats?

plnelson

Aug 16 2007, 11:19

Does the MP3 standard have different or multiple standards for cover art?

A month ago I bought some MP3's on EMusic and added them to my iTunes library to play on my iPod. They didn't display any cover art, which didn't surprise me because the only music with cover art in my iTunes library is music that I explicity added the cover art to. Most of my music is ripped from my MP3 collection using iTunes and if I want cover art I have to go find some and add it.

Anyway, last weekend I set up my new Sonos system, and lo and behold, The EMusic songs had cover art displayed on the Sonos CR100 remote controllers! The CR100 also displays all the cover art that I added to MP3's in iTunes. How come Sonos can see all the cover art but iTunes only some of it?

PS - "iTunes sucks" is not a sufficient answer.

LANjackal

Aug 16 2007, 11:58

The 2 "standard" (readable by across platforms) album art implementations I know of are:

1 - A folder.jpg file in the album folder
2 - Art embedded directly in ID3 tag

Some players read one of the above, some none, some both. Depends on which device/software you happen to be using at the moment.

plnelson

Aug 16 2007, 12:55

QUOTE(LANjackal @ Aug 16 2007, 13:58)

The 2 "standard" (readable by across platforms) album art implementations I know of are:

1 - A folder.jpg file in the album folder
2 - Art embedded directly in ID3 tag

Some players read one of the above, some none, some both. Depends on which device/software you happen to be using at the moment.

Thanks - although I don't recall seeing any external JPG files anywhere on my HD, so I think these are all embedded so there must be 2 embedded standards.

BTW in my original post I meant to say "Most of my music is ripped from my CD collection".

hlloyge

Aug 19 2007, 03:02

They could be hidden.

LANjackal

Aug 19 2007, 06:12

QUOTE(plnelson @ Aug 16 2007, 14:55)

QUOTE(LANjackal @ Aug 16 2007, 13:58)

The 2 "standard" (readable by across platforms) album art implementations I know of are:

1 - A folder.jpg file in the album folder
2 - Art embedded directly in ID3 tag

Some players read one of the above, some none, some both. Depends on which device/software you happen to be using at the moment.

Thanks - although I don't recall seeing any external JPG files anywhere on my HD, so I think these are all embedded so there must be 2 embedded standards.

As hlloyge said, they could be hidden - Windows doesn't show folder.jpg or album art files by default. I'd suggest you load 2 tracks (one for which the art shows up and one for which it doesn't) into MP3tag and see what the differences are in the embedded images. For further elucidation, enable viewing of hidden files for the folders in question via Windows Explorer.